


the half of it

by alamorn



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Hawke-centric, Mage Hawke - Freeform, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9457151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: The story starts: Hawke walks out of the Fade. She walks out rimed with magic and dream stuff, cracking and stinking of the air after a storm—Except no. That's not how it starts. That's not even how it ends. That's a middle, a change of act, intermission maybe. A chance to catch her breath, and the audience too.The stories you tell and the stories you don't.





	

The story starts: Hawke walks out of the Fade. She walks out rimed with magic and dream stuff, cracking and stinking of the air after a storm— 

Except no. That's not how it starts. That's not even how it ends. That's a middle, a change of act, intermission maybe. A chance to catch her breath, and the audience too.

Try again. This is how it starts: Hawke gets left in the Fade, to fight the Nightmare, to die. She’s left behind and Varric asks, “Where's Hawke?” and then he goes back to Skyhold and drinks until he can't remember crying and then the next day he gets up and writes her goodbyes. He does it better than she would have (An excerpt from the letters Hawke would have written: _Carver, if you ever forgive me, I want you to know that the dog always liked me best and that I told Merrill you snore like a druffalo. Anders, I'm sorry your rebellion got overshadowed by the hole in the sky but honestly your feather jacket was also pretty distracting. Isabela, your bosom was a great comfort to me in hard times. Varric, you were always my favorite and—_ ).

Varric writes and writes and writes. His penmanship is worse than it's ever been. The message is always the same, no matter the words. _Hawke died a hero. Hawke helped save the world._

He's wrong, of course. She didn't die, especially a hero, and she helped ruin the world. Corypheus never would have gotten free without her. 

 

 

This part isn’t in the story. It doesn’t flow right, it’s too strange. No one can picture it. And she doesn’t tell. That’s a big part. So here, the part that gets left out: The Nightmare is boring. Or as boring as anything that size can be. It says the same things over and over, and honestly, Hawke's heard worse. From herself, usually, but Aveline could get pretty pointed.

So she wanders the Fade, looking for a rift. It's a nightmare, lower case n. There's no food, no water, but plenty of demons. The spirits are worse, somehow. The demons just want to kill her. The spirits press against her with a mimicry of fingers, stand in front of her with a memory of faces put together wrong. The bones shine through.

“Is that all we are to you?” she asks one. “Bones?”

Curiosity leans closer and she sparks fire at it. “Never mind,” she says, leaning on her staff. “I don’t care.”

 

 

This isn’t the story, either. When people ask, “How did she survive?” they don’t want to hear that she thought of drinking her own blood. 

It’s impossible to tell time in the Fade. Unrooted from reality, unmoored from the physical, the only light is green and all around. Hawke puts a hand on her ribs and presses. They stand out against her skin in a way they didn’t when she got here. They press like knives against her palm.

She says, “The hospitality around here is unimpressive.”

She says, “I’d kill for some steak. Come on, try me!”

She says, “Please. I’m hungry.”

And then there is food in front of her, floating at table height. Roast lamb glistening, baked potatoes with perfectly crackled skin, glazed carrots, and a platter of cut fruit, apples and pears and peaches dripping juice. The food of Fereldan, of home, but better than a family of apostates on the run could ever afford or create.

Her mouth has been dry for so long the rush of saliva is almost painful.

The food is steaming.

She approaches it, slow, slow. The rack of lamb is solid and hot in her shaking hands. She takes a bite of the perfect, tender flesh — and it turns to Fade-stuff, so sharp with magic her jaw seizes up.

This is the story: you cannot eat in dreams.

 

 

This is the story: she survives.

She survives with her lips cracked and bleeding, her mouth like a desert. Her hair grows brittle. She sits down and leans against nothing, holds her staff loosely, looks at nothing.

The nightmare finds her again. Not the Nightmare.

No. Worse.

“Oh, pup,” he says, squatting in front of her. His eyes are kind. “Look at you.”

“I’d rather not,” she says. She should look away from him. He’s a lie. But she can’t. She’s always been weak.

He looks like he does in her memories. Laugh lines around his eyes. Thick hair, thick beard. A mouth made for smiling. Large hands wrapped around his own staff. Her chest aches.

“Pup,” he says. “This is no way to live.”

“Nor to die.”

He cups her face and she leans into the memory of warmth. His hands had been calloused when he lived. Now, they are not quite solid enough for that sort of texture. There is only a slight resistance to the air, smooth as glass. "You have done so well, pup."

Traitorously, her eyes well with tears. "I failed— everyone. Bethany, Carver, Mother. Anders." She coughs out what might, generously, be called a laugh. "All of Thedas."

"No, pup, no," he coos. He smoothes her tears away with his thumbs, then pushes her greasy hair off her forehead, covering it with his palm. "No one should have to carry that much weight, pup. And here you are, still walking." The pressure of his hand increases and increases and increases, and he says, " _Look_ , pup," and there is a piercing pain and she screams and _sees_.

Her father is gone, but the path out is clear before her, the color of Kirkwall's glossy stone. An open rift. Sobbing, great dry heaves of sorrow, she heaves herself to her feet and _goes_.

 

 

This is the story: Hawke walks out of the Fade. She walks out dripping magic not her own. She walks out sharp and lean, only just recognizable as the woman who went in.

She walks out of the Fade in the middle of the damned desert and she'd cry if she weren't already dehydrated. There's rocks, at least, and it's night, at least, so she huddles under the rocks and licks dew from the leaves of the surprisingly phallic plants and she sends up periodic bursts of fire and waits. The magic feels different, surges up too easily and leaves her feeling scooped out and hollow, with the taste of copper on her tongue.

She survives. It's boring, not the story the audience is looking for. She's ruined the end of the story the people want: a fittingly tragic, heroic death for a tragic, heroic apostate that no one actually wants to deal with. She'd apologize, but she's far from sorry when an Inquisition scout comes upon her. 

 

 

Hawke's not sure what she looks like anymore, but the woman's face promises it's not good. No matter. She's given water and dragged to camp, told she's in the Hissing Wastes. She scoffs “ _Orlais,_ ” and collapses.

Every time she drifts into dream, she jerks back to terrified consciousness. She doesn’t scream. Screaming always attracted demons. She just shakes and sweats and stands and paces.

The scouts watch her like Kirkwall watched the Qunari. 

They take her back to Skyhold in a wagon, and she leaves burn marks on the wood when she drifts off. One scout, particularly stupid or particularly brave, says reproachfully, "You're discharging green. It's scaring the horses."

Hawke smiles, or snarls, depending on the version you hear, and says, " _Then go to the Fade and get braver ones_."

 

 

This is the story: Varric meets her at the gate. It’s very romantic, in one version. In another, it’s a pure expression of friendship.

This is the story: She sees him. She goes to her knees. He catches her before she can collapse, but he is crying too. Neither of them can talk, mouths too full of the time between them.

Then she throws off a wave of magic so strong he skids back ten feet. The horses buck and bolt in their traces, and every mage in Skyhold develops a migraine.

“No,” she says, “oh no, no, no.”

She runs. In every version of the story she runs. In every version of herself she runs. She turns on her heel in the gates of Skyhold and bolts the other way, pure magic sparking off with every step.

This is the story: You can still see where she walked, even today. It burned the land, melted stone. The Fade did not give her up willingly, and she did not come out the same woman who went in.

 

 

She doesn’t make it far, of course. She hasn’t slept properly since before she went into the Fade, and the mountains are unforgiving. Even crackling magic, the Inquisition has seen worse than her, so she does not get fifty feet before a scout is trotting next to her.

“He’s fine,” the scout tells her. “Just a little bump. He’ll be right along.”

Hawke pretends not to hear her, just uses her staff as a walking stick. The blade at the bottom tears great gouges in the land to match the burns her feet leave.

Unfortunately, the scout’s right, and Varric hustles down to walk with her before she can even get out of breath. His arm is in a quick sling and she can see burnt patches of skin on his chest and hands and face. She plods faster.

“You think this is bad?” he says, matching her pace easily. “You should have seen me after the Boss decided she wanted a dragon’s tooth. Got a face full of fire. Cassandra had to beat it out of my chest hair. Humiliating for the both of us.”

The scout peels away. Varric waits for her to respond, to make a joke. When she doesn’t, he heaves a sigh. “Hawke,” he says more quietly. “I thought you were dead. I had to — Andraste’s bones, I had to write your _brother_ that you were dead. I’m not writing him another that says you made it back and then got yourself frozen to death because you were so damned stupid you hobbled off into the Frostbacks with no supplies or plan.”

She stops, sways in place. Her staff is carrying most of her weight and her head aches where a dream of her father pressed it. She clenches her jaw to keep from crying. “I should have died in there, Varric,” she spits out. “You gave Thedas a hero but I couldn’t let her be, no, I had to — to mess it all up. I make a mess of _everything_. Kirkwall, then the whole Maker-be-damned _world_ , and now I can’t even die with dignity.”

His hand hovers by her elbow and she wrenches away before he can touch her. Magic crackles ozone sharp on her skin. “ _Don’t_ ,” she pleads.

“Hawke,” he says, soft, “Champion. When did you buy into it all?”

She sways and finally, _finally_ looks at him. There’s no mask of humor, no mask whatsoever. His eyes are soft and gold and there’s something uncomfortably tender in them. “What?” It sounds punched out of her, but she’s already humiliated and terrified. It’s almost a relief to reach rock bottom of vulnerability.

“The _story_ ,” he says, voice so soft and intimate she has to fight the urge to step closer. “When did you buy into it?”

“I don’t — I don’t know what you mean,” she says, but her hands are shaking.

“Champion of Kirkwall,” he says, briefly bombastic. “Hero of the people, leader of a ragtag band of misfits, reluctant mage rights activist — I’m sorry. I told the story to — it doesn’t matter. I never thought — I never thought you’d believe it.”

“What?” she says again, feeling stupid, ready to run.

He drags a hand down his face, blows out a gusty breath. “You’re just a person, Hawke. You’re a really incredible person, but you’re just a person. The Champion — the one all the stories are about? She’s not. She’s a story. The Champion never takes a shit, or gets so drunk she throws up. She’s a — a narrative convenience. You don’t have to live up to her.”

She doesn’t even realize she’s crying until he steps close and wipes the tears away. She pulls away a beat too late and looks up to the scar in the sky, uses the heel of her free hand to wipe away the rest. “I mean, I am the Champion, you know. That is my title.”

He pulls her hand down. Gentle as he is, his grip is firm. “Hawke. Marian. It’s alright. You want the Champion dead? Give me twenty minutes to grab some supplies and she dies here and we walk off into the sunset and find somewhere that’s never heard the name Hawke.”

She turns her hand in his so she can grip his wrist. Green magic crackles across her skin and jumps to his but he doesn’t even flinch. She sniffles, loudly, and pushes her shoulders back and says, “What, and rob you of your revenue? I couldn’t do that to my trusty dwarf.”

He grins at her, a slow, happy thing. “The Inquisition gave me a lot of material to work with. No need to rush your sequel through.”

He lets her take the first steps back towards Skyhold, but he doesn’t let go of her hand. She doesn’t let go either, just adjusts her grip so their fingers are interlaced. “I thought you were _my_ biographer,” she scolds and squeezes his hand hard.

This is the story: They walk back into Skyhold still holding hands.


End file.
